Viva Pinata
Viva Pinata: Classic invites gamers to create an immersive world where living pinatas inhabit an ever-changing garden environment. Beginning with a few basic tools, players build and take control of their environment to attract and host more than 60 species of wild pinata, utilizing hundreds of customizable elements to create their very own distinctively unique thriving pinata paradise. *Discover the secrets of over 60 different candy-filled pinata animals to see them grow, change, fight, and even dance! *Guide a constantly evolving, vibrant world to keep your piñatas happy and protect them from dangers threatening to break them open. *Customize your world and your pinata animals to reflect your style and create a pet paradise unlike any other. *Enjoy both friendships and rivalries in a worldwide community of Viva Piñata players. Gameplay Likened to The Sims, Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon, the game tasks the player with turning a neglected plot of land into a beautiful garden. As with many sandbox games, the game is open-ended, with no strict winning or losing requirements. Instead, players are guided only generally towards the objectives of increasing their garden's value and attracting pinata residents. Players are free to determine their own sub-goals and work towards them. Developing a successful garden requires setting up the land and foliage appropriately to attract piñatas, as well as purchasing various items to place within the garden (e.g., homes for the piñatas). When certain requirements are fulfilled, the garden will attract a simple black-and-white version of a given piñata species. After fulfilling additional requirements, the piñata will become a resident, changing into a full-color version. Once two piñatas of the same species are residents and their mating (romance) requirements are met, they can perform a romance dance, resulting in a baby piñata egg. No piñata has a gender specific design, and hence any two piñatas of the same species can mate (with inter-species romances possible as well in a few cases). After a given piñata species has successfully romanced, the player no longer needs to fulfill the full romance requirements for piñata of that type, but can instead simply have the piñata eat a specific type of candy. When piñatas get together to mate, a maze-navigation minigame is initiated. Completing the mating minigame successfully will result in a piñata egg being delivered shortly thereafter. For species encountered early in the game, the minigames are simple, but as the game progresses, minigames become increasingly difficult. The difficulty also increases as more members of a given species are resident, as the more piñatas in a garden, the fewer the number of lives the player receives during the minigame. The first time the minigame is completed successfully for a given species, the player is rewarded with a unique video sequence which shows the two piñatas dancing to music. In addition to looking after the needs of their piñatas, players must also watch out for Ruffians (and their leader, "Professor Pester") as well as sour piñatas, who enter the garden with the sole intent of wreaking havoc. Their mischief includes eating seeds and produce, destroying objects, or dropping sour candy which causes resident piñatas to become ill if consumed. If the player is resourceful, sour piñatas can, however, be won over and turned into productive garden residents. Additionally, players can earn or purchase individual parts of a totem pole-like structure known as the "Tower of Sour" to deter the type of sour piñata each part corresponds to. Different parts of this become available as the player completes certain requirements. Players can pay Ruffians to leave the garden temporarily, but in order to keep the Ruffians from returning, players must purchase a "Captain's Cutlass" from one of the merchants. Xbox Live Functionality The game supports Xbox Live/Games for Windows- Live, but does so in a strictly non-interactive fashion in order to remain "family friendly". It also includes a safety video for children and parents, explaining potential issues with using the service. While the game supports leaderboards and score comparisons, its primary use of Xbox Live is to allow players to send presents to friends. Piñatas and other items can be packaged up and shipped off to other users. The contents of the box are unknown by the recipient until it is opened, at which time the contents emerge into the garden of their new owner. Lastly, players can use the Xbox Live Marketplace to download several Viva Piñata related items. These include accessory packs and an interactive video which acts as a brief tutorial for the game. During the video, the user can decide which piñata that they would like to walk them through the features of the game. Xbox Live members can also download several episodes of the television series from the Xbox Live Marketplace, with the precise number available varying by locale. These episodes are available in both standard-definition and High-Definition for no charge. Piñatas The game features a wide variety of piñata types (60 in total), in most cases inspired by real-world animals. The names of the piñata species appear to have been generated by combining an animal name or sound with that of a food or candy, producing creatures such as Buzzlegums or Shellybeans. The species include both wild and domestic animal types, with the latter being purchased rather than simply appearing. Rarer species based on fictional animals, such as the Dragonache, are also available. Some of the animals are "piñatavores", and must eat other piñatas in order to become residents or reproduce. An intricate food chain (referred to as the doughnut of life) exists, with a number of piñata species having one or two others that are considered prey. When such piñatas are visiting the garden, they can and will devour garden residents in order to satisfy their own residency requirements. However, once piñatas are residents, they will not eat each other unless instructed to do by the player, although fights can break out between residents who do not share the predator-prey relationship. With some exceptions, piñatas each have different appearance or coloration variants. These variants can be produced by fulfilling certain requirements in the game. For example, a given piñata species may be able to change from its default color to a yellow color by eating a sunflower. Additionally, certain piñatas can evolve into other species altogether, e.g., when a sparrowmint eats a buttercup flowerhead, it turns into a Candary.